


oh, roxie

by kuragins



Category: Ghost Quartet - Malloy
Genre: Gen, just a bit of a roxie character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 03:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12356130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuragins/pseuds/kuragins
Summary: roxie, and rose.





	oh, roxie

roxie usher is four years old and wears her little red dress and runs through the halls with rose. her mother tuts and smoothes her wrinkled skirt, scolding her lightly for the hair sticking to her sweaty forehead.

  
roxie usher is five years old and rose whispers in her ear; tales of worlds long past and worlds still to come and worlds that don’t quite exist, but rose has still been there and come back again. roxie wants to go to all of them. it seems much happier there, she thinks.

  
roxie usher is six years old and her brother watches her from across the table as she slides her plate to the side and smiles at rose. he narrows his eyes.

  
“you know she’s not real, right?” he says slowly, deliberately. roxie looks to her right. rose has a sinister smile on her face.

  
“don’t like him,” rose murmurs, tilting her head to one side.

  
“she doesn’t like you,” roxie informs her brother matter-of-factly, imitating rose’s sideways head movement. her brother sighs and leaves his chair.

  
roxie usher is seven years old and screaming, screaming at her father and her mother and her brother, and she screws her eyes shut to imagine the world she speaks of, the same world rose spun in her head. rose stands behind roxie’s father, hair falling into her eyes as she laughs.

  
roxie usher is ten years old and rose red still visits her. she doesn’t always remember it, but her bloodshot eyes in the mirror and the scratches that cover her arms are enough to let her know. she’s scared. but when rose whispers to her, weaves stories of what was and what will be and what is not (but somehow rose still knows), she can breathe again.

  
roxie usher is thirteen years old and her mother isn’t right. she isn’t right and roxie cries but remembers what rose told her, that someday her mother will be happy again and calm again, that she’ll cross over. rose sits by her bed at night but doesn’t say anything. her presence starts to make roxie uneasy. she doesn’t dare to say anything. she’s sure rose already knows. rose’s eyes are too empty, and roxie thinks they’ll swallow her whole.

  
roxie usher is sixteen years old and she meets the astronomer. he weaves stories in roxie’s ear just as rose did, stories of the worlds beyond theirs, of the worlds in the stars. but sometimes his stories are too close to rose’s. he reads her a poem. roxie sees rose out of the corner of her eye. she looks angry.

  
roxie usher is seventeen years old and the astronomer is gone, but she has her little girl. she has her starchild. but her eyes look deeper and darker than they should, her face reminds her suspiciously of rose’s. she still holds her close.

  
roxie usher is still seventeen but her starchild is gone, her little girl is _gone_ , and a faint scent of seawater lingers and she has vague memories of the water and rose smiles cruelly beside her. roxie can’t breathe, and her mother cries out and her brother has left and her father is silent.

  
roxie usher is gone now, but her eyes still burn bright and and her robe is soaked in fresh blood.

  
roxie usher lunges at her mother. but roxie usher isn’t roxie usher anymore.

  
rose red lunges at pearl.

**Author's Note:**

> my [tumblr](https://andrierretashas.tumblr.com/)


End file.
